Rush ‘n Attack
was a Nintendo Entertainment System game that was released in 1985. It was a
well-rendered platform side-scroller that was somewhat realistic by 8-bit
standards compared to relatively cartoonish games like Super Mario Brothers; Rush ‘n Attack had detailed sprites,
semi-realistic Cold War-inspired backgrounds, heart-pumping music, and
relentless bad guys. Much like Konami's other offerings at the time, characters
were strinkingly humanoid in appearance; in fact, character design was similar
to characters in Castlevania and Double Dribble, which were two other
games from Konami's stable. When I first received Rush ‘n Attack, I was excited because Konami meant quality. Because
I liked Double Dribble, I believed I
would like Rush ‘n Attack. Even when
I first inserted the cartridge into my NES console, I was certain I would enjoy
myself thoroughly.
However, I realized rather quickly how arduous a task it
would be to play this game. The game opens with your character outside an enemy
base somewhere in Russia or someplace. (Of course, it required little
imagination to comprehend that "Rush 'n" meant "Russian".) It's a bleak, gray winter day and all you're armed with is a knife. then the bad
guys rush at you. what are you supposed to do? Well, you're supposed to rush
and attack (Get it?). And so I did. With one button for jump and another button
for attack, I rushed at the enemy with deft presses of the D-pad. Suddenly, a
barrage of bullets arrived. I leapt to dodge the incoming bullets, but one
bullet grazed my boot. In game-speak, it was but one pixel of my boot. Yet,
that was enough to kill my character rather unceremoniously. Rapidly, I
re-spawned and attacked again. Once again, another bullet grazed me by one
pixel and my character was downed. This process repeated once more until all
three lives were lost. End of game. No save points. No starting where I left
off. When your character died in Rush ‘n
Attack, you started from the very beginning. There was not even a Konami
code to give me more lives. I was done right there.
Frustrated, I tried again. I got a little farther, but I
died again. So, I tried again. Each time, I would advance a little farther and
die again. Sadly, each time, I had to start at the very beginning. Eventually,
I would get to Level 2 and then Level 3. However, after losing three lives, I
had no choice but to return to the very first level. Frustration would turn to
angst, and angst would compel me to eject the cartridge in extreme disgust and
disdain.
To be fair, controls were responsive and gameplay was brisk,
but the mountains of cheese in this game were undeniable. Of course, there was
the aforementioned death by a pixel. More annoying than that was having to
start at the absolute initial position of the game after losing all your lives.
Yet, what was most disheartening about this game was that sinking feeling of
powerlessness. Except for your knife, weapons have ammunition limits with no
hope of replenishment except for picking up a new weapon. Moreover, there were
no super weapons in this game; there was no spread gun like in Contra, no Batman batarangs, and no Marioesque invincibility. Tragically, in
the end, it was just you and your knife.
It took little time for me to trade the game away. I could
tolerate it no further and had to remove it from my sight as soon as humanly
possible. At the time, Rush ‘n Attack
seemed like a rare dud from Konami and a stark reminder of how flawed this
world truly is. Nonetheless, like God's grace, there was a silver lining to
this story: I managed to trade the game away for Solomon's Key, which also
proved to be frustrating, but in a challenging, positive way.
For decades, I lived with the psychological trauma of Rush ‘n Attack. However, a few years
ago, I found a video on YouTube. Sometimes, people post videos of their speed
runs through games, attempting to finish them in record time. For example, one
person posted a video of finishing Super Metroid in 90 minutes. Similar to
that, someone posted a speed run of Rush
‘n Attack. As I watched, I witnessed something that stoked uncontrollable
and hearty laughter. Throughout the entire speed run, the player simply tap the
knife button repeatedly and rushed forward to the very far right edge of the
screen. Foes scattered like so many leaves. The player persisted in this way
with nary an incoming bullet, literally rushing through level after level with
just a knife. I was awestruck with how easy the player made it all appear. I
wondered why I had not read about this in Nintendo Power magazine so many years
ago. (Kids, there was no Internet back in those days!)
Oddly, witnessing that herculean feat redeemed the game in
my mind. I took comfort in knowing that there was greater cheese to overcome
this game's cheese. I had found solace and rest as if some profound injustice
had been addressed. Even stranger was the urge to play that game again after
having beheld that indescribable spectacle. Indeed, that game is long gone and
it's just as well that it is. Nevertheless, I can now wax nostalgic about Rush
‘n Attack, and it's a miracle that I can wax nostalgic about it, even though it took me decades to do so.
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